Justice committee  The line should be drawn carefully through the Criminal Code, section by section. It should not be a blanket authorization in advance to break any law subject to a relatively low test of when it's appropriate to break that law.

Justice committee  We've taken the position from the outset that there are a number of laws that need not apply to police officers in the performance of their duty. Among those are laws relating to the possession of contraband materials and laws relating to transactions involving contraband materia

Justice committee  They would be breaking the law without this legislation, but there's no need for this legislation for them to be able to do it. Much more targeted, much more modest, much more carefully controlled legislation that we could have supported five years ago would have permitted, so fa

Justice committee  There are provisions now in the legislation that permit the delay of inclusion in a report until a time when that would not compromise an ongoing investigation, compromise the identity of an undercover officer, or endanger someone's life or safety. Those all seem to be quite reas

Justice committee  I don't know the answer to that. I think probably there are a number of variables that would effect how you would make those decisions. From our point of view, police officers being justified in doing something that would otherwise be breaking the law—may I use the short form of

Justice committee  If I understood you correctly, it was a money laundering operation.

Justice committee  We've said from the beginning that we don't think there's any problem with authorizing police officers to engage in what would otherwise be an offence relating to the possession of contraband or transactional offences relating to contraband. That would include dirty money. That k

Justice committee  I think we're probably thinking of—

Justice committee  It's hard to imagine torture that doesn't involve bodily harm--although it's apparently possible.

Justice committee  Without attempting to give a legal opinion in international law, I would have thought that any Canadian legislation that authorized torture would be contrary to the United Nations covenant and therefore, in international law at least, illegal. It probably would be declared unlawf

Justice committee  I think I can detect a question in there, sir. Maybe the best place to start is to say that probably all of us trust the police as much as you do. We have to trust their protection of our rights and our liberties as much as you do. Many of us have had close contact with the pol

Justice committee  The language in paragraph 25.1(9)(b) is probably not bad, as such language goes. It sets out three exceptions, where an act or omission is necessary to: (i) preserve the life or safety of any person, (ii) prevent the compromise of the identity of a public officer acting in a

Justice committee  In other words, there would not be a separate objective requirement that it be necessary, but that person reasonably believed it was. It simply puts a stronger bar, a higher bar, for the police officer to consider when about to break the law.

Justice committee  Our friend has commented that there are a number of infelicities in the language in this subsection 25.1(11), and I think that's right. One of the problems is that one has to negligently cause death or bodily harm to another person to have offended against that subsection, to hav

Justice committee  Oh, yes.